Art by MeddygonThere is a fine line \ Between genius and madness. \ It is called timing.

“Deadly Virus Man” was the screen name created by a wannabe hacker twelve-year-old that played the MMO “Otherworld” created by “Ettin Industries,” which was a company run by characters within a roleplaying universe known as the “Corkie Commune.” DVM is a triple troll.

DVM is a character in a character I used to role play. The group usually stuck to one universe that visited other universes. The Commune was sort of a limboish place that existed slightly left of reality and could only be first reached by necessity. One RP member decided that he wanted to play a different universe, but rather than start a story up in that universe, he had some convoluted idea. Instead of a new universe with new characters, he introduced an MMO that the characters played, and we were going to play our characters playing their characters. It was pretty obvious to me that he wanted to do a new universe, and I’m still not quite certain why he didn’t just say it. He still has some characters he made up for it in his D&D playing. All characters I made for this universe were silly and lighthearted.
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Echo exists because I had a dream about dying.

Echo is a main character of a story called Vivify that I wrote in October 2007. I recommend reading it before continuing. (Unlike a lot of my other writing, I’ve re-read this and didn’t hate it.)

Echo is the first of the fifth generation Vivified drones created by Dr. Weiss of the Vivifix Corporation. With all the vivi you’d think I’d named her that, but no. Echo’s past life remains an unknown to herself, but she has seen pictures of her recent past. The first two iterations of Vivified (Alpha, Bravo) were her, suspended in fluid for testing connections and controls. Future iterations had some motor skills, but the Echo line was the first to be able to walk and eventually be taught to function.
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Bus (SB, Schoolbus), started as a Dwarf Hunter character in World of Warcraft. Lame, I know, but that’s where she started. She spent her adventuring days hanging around with Underground (UG, Yuji), a man twice her height. Her adventuring days came to a permanent end when the account for Underground was hijacked and banned. My husband and I no longer play WoW.
In WoW, Bus had a flying snake named Aeroplane. She used to have a cat named Shortbus, but a GM determined that Shortbus was an insult and her name was changed to Littlebus. (I had another character’s pet renamed when they failed to recognize the greatness of Bagpuss.)

Bus later evolved in my mind, as I never wrote anything about her, into a young woman who left her family behind to go adventuring. Her life was rather droll, having everything she needed come to her whenever she wanted. She felt her life lacked a certain spark.
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I wish I had more time to write this out. For now it’ll just be a braindump so I don’t forget it.

The dream started with James and I going to Florida. (I have had two previous dreams wherin we accidently end up in Florida and need to get back home ASAP for work.) We needed a place to stay while we were down there, so we thought it was a good idea to steal the old mobile home I grew up in. (I have had several other dreams involving owning this mobile home or others as secondary housing.)

Upon examining the interrior of the trailer, I found that my parents had not completely emptied it and many of my mother’s old business clothes were there. I held up a dress and said to James, “I should take all these home and wear them to work. I can totally start bringing the 80s back.” (I need new business-casual clothes, getting old stuff might be a good idea). Inside the bedroom, my parents old waterbed was still there, along with some fans.
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A fellow named Joel, whom I know from deviantArt, is doing another mega collaboration for the new TF2 update. The previous one, for scout, can be found here. The images in this post are the two I did for the Sniper Vs. Spy update collab. Total of about three hours of work on both images.

Citibank refunded the charge on 5/19 (it didn’t show on the online statement until 5/21). Even though this was resolved, I still received a new message from Valve’s support. They asked me for a screenshot of the fee. I obliged and gave also a screenshot of the Citi CSR stating which charges were considered foreign transactions.

Here’s the conversation through Steam’s support:

8 « Message by Thomas on Tue, 19th May 2009 5:11 pm »
Hello Amanda,
We are still working on this issue and have been talking to the bank, can you please confirm the dollar amount of the foreign transaction fee that they are charging?

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Jacs has a thing for slave traders. A hate thing. A passion to destroy the market of owning people. It may have something to do with her TRAGIC HISTORY of being a slave herself.

Jacs is a privateer sanctioned by several governments to stop the trade of living souls that is legal in the majority of countries in her world. These governments would rather not get involved in direct confrontation with the larger ones, so she doesn’t let on that she’s doing the good work of the small guy. She also wants some profit. So she knocks off the captains of the slave ships, claims the merchandise as her own, and gives them two options: Stay and work on the ship or swim back home. She pays a small wage if they stay, which they can save (to pay Jacs her fee for saving them) or spend (she let’s them buy whatever they want … from her) as they please. Once they’ve paid off the fee, they’re free to go wherever they want. Many end up staying because they’ll make more and be safer on her ship than if they would go back home.

Blue Scout's Mother

inspired by Valve’s “Meet the Spy” video

Thankfully, there is something good about my credit card. The ThankYou network. For each dollar spent using my AmEx, I get 1 point. A point is about a half a penny to two cents when compared to retail prices of items (it depends on popularity and inventory) trading them in. So, now we have:
Silversun Pickups – Swoon
Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown

EDIT on 05/21/09: see bottom for more details

Update on the foreign transaction fee issue. After waiting a few days for a response to my previous call, I decided it would be better to call them. After explaining the situation to “Hugo,” I was transfered to a supervisor (“Mr. Thomas”). I explained the situation to him, and he stated that the foreign transaction fees are automatic and they do not watch for them. Since it is so common for US businesses to process through Canada (and warn their customers of possible fees) they don’t bother with alerting customers of foreign purchases. He waived the $1.92 and thanked me for being a customer. I’ll be checking my account online at the end of the business day to verify that it’s been taken off.

If Valve had at all stated that they process payments outside of the US (in plain text would have been nice, but they didn’t even have it in legalese), I would have made the purchase in a different manner.
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I, like many others out there, avidly review my credit card statements. I view the card’s activity online before statements to make sure there aren’t any unauthorized purchases on there. I don’t think I’ve actually found any in the eight years I’ve had this card. When statements come around, I like to know exactly what finance charges are applied. This month, for the first time, I saw “FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE.” Having never made a foreign transaction on this card, I immediately questioned it through their secure messaging system.

Subject: FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE
Date/Time: 05/13/09 07:22:15 PM
You wrote:
I would like more detail on the following as I do not recall making any foreign purchases:
05/12/2009 FOREIGN TRANSACTION FEE*FINANCE CHARGE $1.92 Transaction Type: 3 Post Date: 05/12/2009 Reference Number: 00000000 Charge To: Standard Purch

Pyro’s flare gun done up as a wooden popgun, will do more changes if I feel like it.

I had a dream about playing some third person shooter and this was one of the guys in it

blah so tired

There’s a whole bunch of new Jonas pictures on Picasa.

Also, Jonas now has a twitter. Mostly we’re keeping tack of feedings on it.

SleepDepJoel @ Apr 16, 2009, 8:44:13 PM
I request a portrait of Malaclypse the Younger, the founder of Discordia. A bun-less hotdog should be worked into the piece in order to avoid heresy, eternal snubbing, etc.

And there you have it, folks. I read Principia Discordia before I drew this, fun read. In other news, I bought some games on Steam for my brother (L4D, Orange Box). AND I have a working copy of ps again. 

And happy anniversary, parental units.

Gimp is still not my favorite image editing program, but it has improved since the last time I used it. I just know where everything I want is in photoshop, and I don’t want to take the time to learn where everything I want is in gimp. Oh well, you can’t always get what you want.
Anyway, new art.

Just when I was getting in the art groove again, photoshop craps out on me and I have to wait for it to reinstall again. There’s not even a guarantee it’ll even work right. Time to acquire other image manipulation tools. Capital SIGH.

Day three of new art. Let’s all go into the water.

I thought that it was odd that I have the two LFG books, the Richard keychain, the Richard figurine, and even the Richard socks, but I have never done any Richard fanart.

I haven’t drawn anything in a while because of wrist problems (swelling and numbness from pregnancy). I hit my pre-pregnancy weight two weeks ago, and have dropped below it. I have feeling in my hands again.

I’d been doodling in my sketchbook, but haven’t bothered to scan anything because scanning seems like a pain right now.

So I freehanded someone in photoshop that I haven’t drawn since 2002ish. Will finish after Jonas eats.

Image completed @ 18:30
I dicked around a lot with various things in photoshop.

Plans today:

1. Possibly sleep before having to leave, or maybe just sleep in the car.

2. Pack up and go go go

3. Lunch at Jorenko’s side

4. Dinner at my side

5. Return home and locate the stealthmaster daggercat and hope he didn’t hide in some barely reachable place again

This is Dagwood, our newly adopted cat. He’s a neutered adult male with a sweet, passive disposition. The couple we got him from adopted him recently, and found that the dog and Dag didn’t get along, and male side of the betrothed couple was allergic. They told us Dag came from a house of six cats that was in foreclosure and the owner could no longer care for the pets. Here are the craigslist pictures since I don’t have any of mine up yet.

May 20 2006
Oh geez, I put a lot of effort into to. I’m really surprised at what I can do now, after spending so much time doing nothing at all.

This is Ba, a troll shaman from World of Warcraft in the dungeon 1 set, “Elements.”

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Roomba may have mastered the skill of not-falling-down-stairs, but it is still easily defeated by chairs.